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Need to get a new network up and running quickly? Follow our step-by-step guide.

A computer network is an essential element of modern business, and it's increasingly indispensible in the home, too. A network lets your computer connect to the Web so that you can check e-mail, update a website, or teleconference. It also lets you communicate locally with other computers on the same local network. Creating a network is simpleall that's needed is to connect a computer to a router with an Ethernet cable. That's a very rudimentary setup, however. You'll need other components if you want to add multiple computers to your network, share files, stream multimedia, share a printer, or control which computers can access data on the network. And complexity increases if you decide that some links in your network will be made wirelessly. Fortunately, we're here to assist. We've gathered together a list of all gear you'll need to quickly and easily set up a home or small home-office network, and some key hints for getting it all to work together.

Choose a Wireless Router
You can't have a home or small office network without a router. And for almost every network you're likely to build these days, that means a combination of wired and wireless connections. A wireless router can provide both.

The router acts as a bridge between your home network (your local area network or LAN) and the Internet (the wide area network or WAN), and also allows all computers connected to it to share the connection. Your router also typically acts as your network's DHCP server, enabling each device that you connect to have an individual and private IP address. This is vital if you need the devices on the network to communicate with each other. Wireless routers also have embedded firewalls to protect a network from threats and intrusion. Use WPA or WPA2 security for protecting your Wi-Fi network, and never leave the router's administrator password at its default setting.

Routers are known for being notoriously complicated to set up, but units such as the $149 Cisco Valet Plus come bundled with special software that makes creating a network super simple. The one limitation with the Valet Plus is that it only operates on the 2.4-GHz band. If you plan to add a storage device, multimedia server, or your own Web server, you'll want a router that supports the 5-GHz band and that has Gigabit Ethernet ports for speedy wired connections.

A dual-band (i.e., 2.4- and 5-GHz) router such as the $169 D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit facilitates faster throughput for demanding tasks such as sharing files and streaming video. Remember, the 5-GHz band won't make an Internet connection faster. Web speeds are controlled by your ISP and your local telecom (or cable) infrastructure. If you're shopping for a speedier ISP, read Internet Speed Test: The Fastest ISP in the U.S. 2010. What using the 5-GHz band can do, however, is make your internal network peppier.

Choose a Networking Standard
Another important consideration is which wireless networking standard to go with. All of the latest routers, wireless devices like the iPad, and even desktops such as the Apple mac Mini are shipping with the 802.11n networking standard (or just "N" for short). If all the devices on your network support Nbest practice warrants running your network in N mode (done through the router's settings). N devices have theoretical maximum transfer rates of 540 Mbps faster than legacy standards, b and g. However, you won't actually see 540 Mbps due to interference, overhead, and other factors, but you will get better throughput in your network.

Of course, you may have older devices that don't support the N standard. This won't be a problem with connectivity; devices that are only 802.11 b and g capable can still connect to wireless-N routers, provided the router is set to operate in "Mixed Mode." Keep in mind though; an older device connecting at b or g can slow down the entire network. If you can swing it, upgrade your devices and adapters to N. This will let you take advantage of the 5-GHz band, if you're using your network for streaming multimedia or sharing other large files.

About the Author

Samara Lynn has nearly twenty years experience in Information Technology; most recently as IT Director at a major New York City healthcare facility. She has a Bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, several technology certifications, and she was a tech editor for the CRN Test Center.
With an extensive, hands-on background in deploying and manag... See Full Bio

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